


English the Enemy

by empty_battlefield



Series: A Slice of Sadstuck [10]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bad English, Bullying, Cute, Hispanic Character, Hopeful Ending, Human Tavros Nitram, Humanstuck, Not Sadstuck, Other, POV Tavros Nitram, gamzee swears like a sailor, pbj, tavros speaks some spanish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 14:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9901892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empty_battlefield/pseuds/empty_battlefield
Summary: You would picture Tavros' enemy to be some terrifying, gigantic green skull monster.Instead it was the stupid English language, which Tavros' native Dominican tongue couldn't seem to get a handle on.Perhaps the advice of the mellow upperclassman student he meets while hiding in the coat closet at school will rub off on him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish to English translations in the footnotes.

“ _¡Caraaaaaaaajo!_ ”

You turn around slowly at the expletive. You hear her cacophony of laughter. You feel the prying eyes of nearly everyone in the dusky high school hallway—the onlookers with their chins tucked into their lockers, quietly observing their daily serving of Vriska related antics served with a side of Tavros Nitram.

“So Toreasnore.” You cringe at her stupid nickname for you, “Why didn’t you come to PE last period, hmm?”

You are quiet. 

“Freakin’ cutter,” Vriska spits bitterly. “And the goddamn school system just puts up with your wimpiness, because for whatever the reason they couldn’t say no to whatever stupid, shitty reason you stuttered out to them. I mean seriously, I’ve got to be the only one with any sense around here.”

Everyone expects quiet out of you, because everyone knows you don’t talk much. There is actually so much you want to say, that your limited comfort with the English language will not allow you to say. But there were words that were tough to integrate into a sentence right there on the spot: _polio outbreak, bad vaccine, action, intervention, therapy, recovery, lucky to be on your feet._ But you know that it’s all those "um's" and "uh's" in between that Vriska preys on. 

It is better not to speak at all.

“Why don’t you say anything, Tavros?”

“I, uh, do not want to cause any trouble. Uh, I just, um, left my coat in there,” you say in a low voice, pointing to the door that Vriska was blocking with her tall, slender frame. 

Vriska laughs hysterically again. All she wanted was to hear you stammer. You reach for the knob, but she grabs your wrist—not trying to hurt you, yet letting you feel her grip. She gives you a hard stare, as the sweat builds up under her palm. And you look fearfully into her twisted smile, beyond her wire glasses into her singular, electric blue eye—the other one covered by an amblyopic eye patch. She must have known that your coat wasn’t really in there. She didn’t say anything, but by her look, she _knew._

Vriska releases her grasp on your wrist, finally. She bounds down the hallway to find her group of friends in the lunchroom, swinging her lunchbox in the crook of her elbow and chuckling under her breath. 

Believe it or not, you weren’t always this quiet. And you weren’t always this shy. But Vriska had always taken a hatred toward you. Ever since the first day of school, she laughed at your broken sentences, your accent and your shy disposition. Every time you opened your mouth. You always meant to shoot a comeback at her. One of these days. But you were never very smart or talented at thinking on your feet—and those “um’s” and “uh’s” had a tendency to pile up when she demanded English of you—filling the spaces between your fractured words. 

You found that it was better to not speak at all. If you had the option. It’s tough to make friends though, if you don’t speak to them. 

You enter the teacher’s coat closet to eat lunch by yourself. Normally you’d sit in the cafeteria with Kankri Vantas. He’s your best friend, in the loosest sense of the word. Kankri’s a big talker. He’s pompous and sort of vain, really—but _he_ probably thought _you_ were significantly boring. Yet you’re a big listener—the _only_ listener. But Kankri is out of school today, which is both a burden and a breath of fresh air. 

You tuck your lunch and your books under one arm, and gently close the wooden door behind yourself. You think back to the time when you were “the new kid” in high school, still trying to make friends. Sollux was this kid that you knew Vriska picked on, because he had a lisp—you thought you’d be great friends, since you figured he was from Spain judging by the way he talked. Turns out he was from Michigan. You cringe at the awkward memory in your head as you slowly lower yourself to sit on the floor. 

You might has well have never said anything to that kid at all. And you haven’t spoken a word to him since. You were never all that good at sports either, even in the Dominican Republic, a big part of that being because of your legs. So you were never “one of the guys” back home either. 

Your parents couldn’t be more ecstatic to see you studying well in an American school, adapting well to American life, and most of all, speaking, well, in American English. Your parents are always encouraging you to watch TV in English and read English books. They want to hear the English words spoken from your mouth. They definitely have a skewed perception of how quick you really are to catch onto things. 

You stare down at your biology textbook from class, gnawing absentmindedly on a PB-J sandwich as crumbs fall onto the pages. You like animals. Wordlessly, you understand them. It helps that most scientific words are cognates. If you can just focus on that, it’ll be your ticket out of Serket City—then to disappear into college. You are picking crumbs out of the spine of your book when you hear the creak of a doorknob turning loud in your ears.

A chill runs down your spine, and you meant to scramble to your feet just in time to pretend that you really were looking for your coat. But your damn legs won’t react fast enough, and so on the floor, cross-legged you stay. 

It isn’t Vriska who steps in. It is Gamzee, a kid that you have seen around school before. He is even in some of your classes, although he is older than you. He smells more than vaguely of marijuana, and his long gangly legs almost trip over you as he shuffles over to the coats along the back wall. He doesn’t seem to notice that you are quite obviously eating lunch alone in the coat closet. Or maybe he doesn’t care.

He fishes around in one of the coats’ pockets, and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. “Motherfucking miracle,” he murmurs to himself. He digs in his own pants pocket for a lighter and starts smoking right there in the room. “You want one too?” he asks you.

“Um, no thanks.”

He returns the pack to the teacher’s coat, holding the cigarette between his teeth while hoisting himself up to sit on an old teacher’s desk crammed into the corner. His slender legs are dangling over the side. “You sound funny, motherfucker. What’s your name?”

“Tavros,” you answer. “My family’s Dominican. We moved here about three months ago.”

Gamzee laughed. “Welcome to America, Tavbro!” he exclaims, throwing up his arms, and almost losing his balance. You smile tightly. “You speak Spanish?” he asks. You nod.

He laughs hysterically again, cigarette nearly falling out of his grin. “Say something in Spanish!” he demanded.

“What should I say?”

“Anything!”

You clear your throat a bit. “ _Un hombre joven está en pie en su cuarto de dormir. Aunque hace trece años que este joven fue dado vida, pero solo hoy le será dado un nombre. ¿Qué será su nombre?_ ”

This makes Gamzee go nuts. He shrieks and howls in a riot of laughter. You sit there tensely smiling. “That’s awesome, motherfucker!” He falls silent a moment and looks you straight in the eyes. “You weren’t all up and reading that off the page, were you?”

“No,” you say. “This is my biology textbook.”

“Wow…What, you got a test next period?”

“Uh—no. I don’t have a test. It will probably be later in the month. But I like to be ahead. And I’d like to be a biologist, maybe, so…”

Gamzee nods. He takes another drag of his cigarette, and keeps nodding. “That’s good, kid,” he says. “That’s real good. You're motherfucking smart. And you speak two languages too! You be the one all up and answering the teacher’s questions like a motherfucking lighting round, ah?”

“I’m not really all that smart,” you say. “And—I don’t talk much in class. As you probably already know.” Gamzee must have forgotten that he actually shared Biology with you.

He coughs. “Why not?”

“Um, I guess I’m not all that confident? With English.”

“Not confident, huh?” Gamzee repeats, taking another drag. “Why not? Your English is great! I can understand you just fine.”

“Um, no, it isn’t, not really,” you say quietly. “The only reason I’m not failing every class is because of my written papers.” You add, “I think I would speak better if I could just reach the words fast enough.”

Gamzee shifts his butt on the desk with the cigarette dangling from his mouth. “I dunno, Tavbro…you sure you're all that motherfucking bad? I feel you just fine and ain’t that the whole point of talking anyways?”

You don’t know exactly what he meant. You are pretty sure you understood all the words, but at the same time didn’t. “Pretty sure…I guess so,” you reply. It was a lame response, but you didn’t want to disagree with whatever he was saying.

“All I’m saying is,” Gamzee begins, “it don’t really matter how you say it or if you fuck the words up in between. Cause it matters just what it is you're motherfucking saying, not how you're all up and saying it. Nobody’s motherfucking perfect. Just look at me. Y’know what I mean?”

You nod. You think you understand. “Right.”

Gamzee doesn’t look like he plans on snuffing out his cigarette any time soon. You check the watch on your wrist for the bell. You hastily compress your brown paper bag and the garbage within it into a tightly coiled ball and toss it in your backpack, along with the books and things you are rapidly grabbing off the floor.

“Tavbro—man, what are you doing?”

Gamzee catches you off guard. “Uh, I have to go um, put my stuff away—before the bell rings,” you say nervously.

“I know you like to be the motherfucking early bird, but you’ve got like twenty minutes,” he says to you.

“Ten,” you corrected. “But—I don’t want to let anyone see me coming out of the coat closet,” you say, keeping in mind a certain one-eyed, blonde _cochina_.

“Where are you gonna go, though?” Gamzee said. “You best be at least getting your motherfucking chill on until the bell.”

You pause a moment in thought. You slowly drop your backpack from your shoulders and say, “Okay.”

He gestures theatrically to the empty space beside him, smiling. You eventually hoist yourself up onto the desk. Stupid legs. Gamzee offers you his cigarette once again, and once again you decline. You fear that the desk will break under the weight of the two of you, but eventually it goes away. You like the way Gamzee talks—you almost wish the whole English-speaking world sounded like him. You know it isn’t perfect.

But hey—nobody is, right?

You and Gamzee exit the closet together when the bell does ring. He swings the door wide open, something you wouldn’t do yourself. The walk back to the lockers next to him _sin vergüenza_ didn’t last long enough. 

The next Biology period you have is Friday, last period. Gamzee expects you to kick some _culo_ , although he used different words. It helps that Vriska is absent and most of the class is checked out. The teacher asks the class the difference between mitosis and meiosis. Gamzee gives you two thumbs up.

You raise your hand for the first time that year—and it wasn’t even to ask to go to the bathroom. You are the only one awake. The baffled teacher calls on you.

“Well, um—mitosis involves the creation of two uh, identical daughter cells. And meiosis involves the creation of four unidentical gamete cells.”

The teacher is just as surprised as you are. She doesn’t say anything. The silence is getting awkward, so you add, “Oh, and um, the crossing over happens in meiosis and not mitosis, and that’s why the cells are different.”

“Exactly right,” she responds before moving on, glancing over at you every few minutes. Whenever she needed an answer, you kept supplying them for the rest of the class period.

When the bell rings again, you begin to slowly pack up your stuff, and you catch Gamzee’s eye as you do so. He is grinning ear to ear—in that same way your parents do when you get off the bus every day. 

_Con orgullo._

And you think you deserve to be proud too, so you give him your broadest smile in return.

**Author's Note:**

> TRANSLATIONS:  
> carajo = a mean thing to call someone, equivalent to motherfucker  
> Un hombre joven está en pie en su cuarto de dormir... = a young man stands in his bedroom...(yeah you know the rest)  
> cochina = filthy girl/bitch  
> sin vergüenza = without shame  
> culo = butt  
> con orgullo = with pride
> 
> As always, and all comments on this work are greatly appreciated!


End file.
